Author's Note: Original Marvel Characters and location belong to Marvel Entertainments and Affiliates. Everything else is mine. Because devilgrrl and peculiarmaleficent asked for a follow up. Reviews and feedback are appreciated. Let me know what you think.

references "safety in the aftermath" but you don't have to read to understand this one

(He had sent Melinda a Christmas card one year. Some stupid off the rack hallmark card with a fireplace on the front. She and Natasha had knitted him some ridiculous snow hat, complete with tassels and a stupid bobble on the top. They had even included matching fingerless gloves. They had been varying shades of neon green, orange, and sky blue.

But it had been soft, warm even.

And he had to admit, the craftsmanship was damn good.)

When Nick Fury touched down in the empty part of the hanger, he was flooded by the night agents; at least a dozen of then, all pointing their guns up at his face.

"Sir, you need to see this."

What seemed to be the head agent, late forties with darker hair (O'Brien, L6 Specialist) spoke into his walkie talkie without taking his eyes off his former commander.

There was some uneasy shuffling among the agents as they kept their weapons pointed up. Fury remained coolly up near the top of the ramp, eyeing each of the agent's faces fully as they became less and less sure about their intention with the metal weapons.

One even dropped their SIG.

Nick snorted.

"Everybody out!" the order rang out with an even tone.

Phil Coulson stood near the door of the plane with a small gaggle of people behind him. The hacker girl (Skye) and the very tall black man (Mackenize, L3 head mechanic) both eyeing him in varying degrees of surprise and awe.

He frowned slightly.

Where was May?

"Sir? What's happened? What are you doing here?"

Coulson stepped forward. Panic wasn't a good look on the new Director's face and as Nick descended to the ground of the hanger with a resounding thud as his boots hit the ground.

He held up the keys to the ramp in his left hand, dangling it just in front of Coulson's face.

"You brought us a plane?" Coulson's voice was incredulous and his eyes wide.

"When have I ever brought you a plane, Coulson?" Nick immediately turned and shot him an appraising look; at least a part of Coulson remembered his training because he fell silent promptly, chastised, a tinge of rouge in his cheeks.

"Never, sir."

"Wait—did he seriously bring Coulson a plane?" Daisy's voice was high with incredulous in the background.

"He brought May a plane," the engineer supplied in a low voice.

It was a much better plan that trying to convey his apologies with words. This was only way he could really. Because he had watched as agents consoled her at Coulson's funeral. He hadn't seen interagency cooperation like that in years; the way the higher up agents sat surrounding her and Romanoff and Barton, like protection detail. The way hands touched her shoulder (barely there, just enough to be noticed), and they didn't speak a word throughout the entire service, in solidity with her silence.

He couldn't do the hand holding—he doubted she'd even except that kind of intimacy from him—not after Tahiti and all the lies. And "I'm sorry for loss" seemed so empty and devoid.

It was Andrew, who he and Barton had stalked relentlessly to make sure wasn't some rival spy from another agency or an assassin planning a mark. Andrew who would cut up flowers and send them in envelopes to the Triskelion for Melinda to open between ops. Andrew who not only married May, but Coulson, and Romanova, and Barton, and even himself to a degree, because he wouldn't ask her to leave the job she was born to do.

She wasn't some cookie cutter loved one that they were forced to deal with, some mission gone wrong to try and haphazardly sweep under the rug with a prerecorded apology. She deserved more than that.

But, Nick didn't have the words to say all that, so a fully operation Quinjet-Bus hybrid was just…easier.

"I was in the neighborhood," he said glancing appraisingly around the garage, his voice deliberately vague, bored, "thought I'd drop in for a chat."

He saw Coulson's shoulder's tense and knew his message was received.

Listening to Director Coulson debrief about the state of his fallen agency was exactly the same as Junior Agent Coulson debriefing about his first field op in Sausalito, attempting to explain why his partner had driven an armored SUV into the bay with their surveillance suspect, then proceeded to get shot and acquire hypothermia from being stranded in the water for five hours before Coulson fished her out.

Meaning the explanation was long.

And painful.

And not at all to the point.

Coulson was always gifted with the ability to fill a silence with a lot useless information that Barton would call "fluff" and Hill would call "bullshit". Fury was smart enough to fill in the blanks: the lack of levels, the lack of compartmentalization between higher up, the destruction of the Index, focus on Inhuman taskforce, and their current alliance with the newly minted ATCU, he knew what Coulson was trying to achieve.

(It was as about anti-Fury as you could get.)

He had told Coulson to rebuild their fallen agency the right way…this just wasn't what he expected. (Nick thought he had given Coulson a little trust in the system, his system, after all.)

But he had given over the reins and he wasn't here to interfere.

Until he heard that the mechanic was acting as current Deputy Director. He could see the apprehension on Coulson's face. It was the same look that he gave his S.O. before when he disagreed on a radical op plan or acquisition of a questionable asset.

So Nick asked the question that he came here for.

"Where's May?"

"She just got back from an op." There was something a little off in Coulson's voice. "She's being looked over by our biochemist. Agent Johnson can take you to her."

It was the first time since the two had shaken hands at Coulson's Academy graduation that he hadn't been at his partner's bedside after an injury, and Fury forced himself to not remark on it.

Daisy perked up at the mention of her name and immediately moved towards the door.

"How long have you known, May?"

Right off the bat, she was a nosy one. It was expected really; the words in her file before S.H.I.E.L.D. reinvented itself had little to do with her obedience, spotting vocabulary like flight risk. Anarchist. Hacker. Threat.

"Hell of a lot longer than you," was his succinct response.

She glanced down at the ground and her lips closed. Hmm, perhaps there was a little more obedience in the girl after her time working as May's rookie. He knew there had been some falling out; Melinda wasn't one to go into depth about her altercation (was it still called an altercation if one person didn't fight back?) but he knew more than enough of the details about Afterlife and the aftermath to know that Skye, now Daisy Johnson was no longer the rookie of May.

"Melinda May has worked for me since she was sixteen years old."

Daisy's eyes grew a little larger and didn't ask any more questions as they arrived across the base.

"Agent May, I really must insist that you—"

He couldn't quite hear Melinda's response, though it was probably a good one. May was rather adept at getting out of medical situations that she didn't want to be in. When both he and Daisy walked inside, her eyes immediately flew to his, a million question fluttering through at a speed he couldn't keep up with.

"Director Fury?"

Beside him, Agent Johnson seemed like she wanted to correct the older agent, (she wouldn't be wrong—he wasn't even an agent now, let alone the Director) but the title was a welcome warm spot in his chest.

He didn't speak when he walked up to her and he could feel the tension in the others around them. Tipping Melinda's neck, he could see what their biochemist was having such a fuss about.

The bruising was stark purple against her normally pristine, porcelain skin. Had Coulson seen this yet? To get bruises this dark, she would have been close to losing consciousness. The bile in his throat was acidic and he forced himself to swallow.

"How many?"

He tore his eyes off the wound to look at her face as he spoke. She rolled her eyes and there was a sudden sense of fondness and nostalgia to their situation.

"Nine, but I was supposed to be undercover."

The kid in the corner of the room, shaggy hair, bright and sparky eyes with the mannerism that made him unlikely to be an operations graduate, shared a wide eyed glance at Daisy behind him before glancing back down at the ground.

Three guesses what asshat screwed up her operation.

He moved a handful of hair out of the way and inspected her neck.

"No petechiae, good visual acuity. If her windpipe was damaged, she'd be dead by now. Seems to me she's fine, right Agent May?"

"Right, sir," she chimed in.

Minus the large purple handprints on her necks, of course.

His hand was still on her neck as the girl sputtered around. "I hardly think that we should haphazardly clear her willy nilly to go—" She glanced between Daisy to May and even over to the boy in the corner before looked back over at him, her mouth still spouting off medical reasons to hold Melinda in observation.

Nick stepped away from the table and moved towards the door.

"May, with me."

(It wasn't a command—not anymore—but she obeyed like it was one.)

Melinda detached herself from the monitors with ease and hopped off the table with the grace and fluidity she was known for, following close on his heel. He could practically feel her smirk from behind him.

Honestly, she didn't have to act so smug about it.

They walked in silence through the maze of corridors for a few minutes before she spoke.

"Did you come just to break me out of medical?"

"You could have done that yourself."

"Yes."

She didn't elaborate. He was one stubborn bastard, he could wait her out and see if she was going to talk. Their last encounter just a few months ago wasn't that far from his mind.

Once he had called her and Barton in to his office after one particularly catastrophic prank (Sitwell was never the same in debriefings after that) and they sat in total silence for three and half hours before Barton begged one of them to speak, "god just say something" and he had cracked first, much to her amusement.

He could wait her out, but it was only seconds before her curiosity at his sudden presence won out.

"Is everyone okay?"

It was different than is everything okay? Because everything, per normal, had gone straight to hell. It was her way of politely asking the question on every agent's mind in the building,"why the hell are you here, Nick?"

"Everybody's alive."

He didn't miss the twinge of tension that disappeared from her shoulders as the words passed over her and their next few moments were bathed again in silence.

When they reached the garage, Coulson, Mack, and Daisy were already there and Nick felt a surge of annoyance at the sudden audience. Melinda noticed them too, but didn't falter in her footsteps behind him.

(She never did hesitate to follow him into stupid scenarios. May never told him what he did all those years ago to earn such a fragile gift.)

Melinda turned towards him, still letting him lead (she always let him lead) towards the new plane before he stopped in front plane.

"Are we going somewhere?"

Her voice was quiet and it immediately brought back memories of the older days when they were all on the road together; him, Melinda, Barton, and Coulson. The way things were simpler and he could count on things he knew.

When he knew without a doubt that Phil loved his partner and that Hill would succeed him as Director one day.

And then strings in the Agency started to get cut, and one mission by one mission, Manama '08, New York '12, D.C. '14, each concrete idea crumbled a little more. And if there was nothing left of the others things, he knew without a doubt that he could trust Melinda and her judgement.

"Nope."

Her eyebrows dipped slightly, allowing him a visual cue of confusion.

She still didn't question their motive for being in the garage as the ramp lowered and he inclined his head to the inside of the plane and she climbed inside without a second thought.

"Barton named her 'The Zephyr'," he called up to her. Her face morphed into a gentle smile that was gorgeous and completely Melinda May.

When she had signed on to S.H.I.E.L.D., she had practically been a child. Peggy had been in love with her from their first sit down together across from the coffee shop near her martial arts studio in Washington D.C., when the older woman was able to convince her to give up her birthright in the CIA for the thrill of being a S.H.I.E.L.D. specialist.

He had been against it on principle; no sixteen-year-old was that good, that reliable, that important, but Melinda had been all too happy to knock him on his ass upon their introduction, showing him just how wrong he didn't know he could be about little girls and their place in black ops.

(He never hesitated to defend her after that encounter and she never disappointed him.)

Nick tossed her the key to engage the ramp and she caught them one handed from the edge of the cockpit chair. The holographic flight created what Stark had described as "next level mobility for any capable pilot" which was ironic from a man who let robots fly his planes. (The last time he had handed Melinda a pair of keys to a plane it was when he was blackmailing her back into the field with threats of never seeing her partner again.)

"I thought we weren't going anywhere."

"We're not."

Her dark eyes met his suddenly and her grip tightened around the keys as just what he was saying reached her.

I'm sorry about Andrew.

He watched her struggle for a response, watching the way her entire body went into trying to make up her mind on how to respond; the way her chest froze stopped for the briefest of second as she understood what he was trying to tell her, the way she blinked twice quickly as she tried bring herself to do whatever it was she wanted.

And when she decided, Melinda perked up onto her toes (she had always been short) and pressed her lips gently against his.

It was quick and gentle and chaste; a movement every member of Strike Team Delta was intimately aware of, because even before the desert silenced Melinda, May sometimes had trouble with words. Her actions, however, were always the clearest translator of anything she ever wanted to say.